According to a recent article in the Telegraph, a combination of the recession and steadily increasing fees means that private schools in this country are becoming more and more the prerogative of really wealthy families and foreigners.

* British pupil numbers in private school have fallen every year since 2008 and the fall is accelerating.

* Private school fees are on average up 4.5 per cent in 2011, according to the ISC survey; up to an average £13,800 a year for day places, and £26,000 for boarders.

* Occupations of head of households for fee-paying schools are rapidly excluding middle-class families who used to use private schools. The bankers and lawyers are still queuing up, but architects, police officers, teachers and pharmacists have melted away.

* Only 8% on average of private school children receive bursaries - this figure falls as low as 2% at the upper end of private schools. It now costs more than £150,000 to send a child to Eton for five years.

Given this situation and the increasing polarisation of the fee-paying sector, can it be right that (heavily) state-funded Oxford and Cambridge still draw nearly 50% of their students from fee-paying schools?

How can these increasingly separate and privileged institutions possibly retain charitable status? The latter should be cancelled. The former should be critiqued and changed.

Doesn't surprise me. The cost to put your kid in a private school is completely ridiculous and not worth the money - £26,000 a year for five years to get a few more A's at GCSE? You can do that for £130,000 less with a bit of hard work. It's mad, you have to be clinically insane. It's no wonder only the very rich still send their children to them.

No it is not. Please stop stereotyping. It is mostly fulled of middle class parents struggling to get by and they need more burasaries. jeez, these institutions provide some of the most intelligent people in the world today, if you want to stop them then the government should build better state schools!

(Original post by patrickinator)
No it is not. Please stop stereotyping. It is mostly fulled of middle class parents struggling to get by and they need more burasaries. jeez, these institutions provide some of the most intelligent people in the world today, if you want to stop them then the government should build better state schools!

It isn't me stereotyping, the facts are the facts, they are drawn from surveys with the Schools themselves. British private schools are becoming narrower in their class-base and they are becoming less British. The only conclusions I've drawn are the obvious ones, that the privileged route into Oxbridge for them should be closed down, as there is no conceivable reason why the taxpayer should support these private businesses' closed-loop access via compliant academics in those universities and that their charitable status should end, since they are not charities.

(Original post by Fires)
It isn't me stereotyping, the facts are the facts, they are drawn from surveys with the Schools themselves. British private schools are becoming narrower in their class-base and they are becoming less British. The only conclusions I've drawn are the obvious ones, that the privileged route into Oxbridge for them should be closed down, as there is no conceivable reason why the taxpayer should support these private businesses' closed-loop access via compliant academics in those universities and that their charitable status should end, since they are not charities.

Privaleged root into oxbridge WTF! there isn't one. you are one paranoid person, you must be super jealous that foreigners are taking places at these schools!

Parents who are actively involved in their children's learning will go further towards the child doing well in school than paying thousands of pounds.

Up to a point that's true, until you consider that those schools have private access to a large and wholly disproportionate swathe of pre-reserved places at Oxbridge. (Yes, of course, the Universities pretend they aren't pre-reserved - but we all know they are!)

(Original post by patrickinator)
Privaleged root into oxbridge WTF! there isn't one. you are one paranoid person, you must be super jealous that foreigners are taking places at these schools!

You should try arguing from facts and not accusations of emotional hangups. The facts are that nearly 50% of places at Oxbridge still go to fee-paying schools and that this figure has hardly changed for years. Furthermore, the percentage does not, repeat does not, reflect actual academic attainment - it reflects the pre-Oxbridge interview coaching, prepping and cultural training of those schools and it reflects the predispositions and selection criteria in use in Oxbridge.

£13,800 a year makes mine look cheap. Sounds like you're taking very top-end schools as the basis for your argument.

I've always wondered how much it costs the government to fund one child right through state education, though. If you took everyone out of private and put them in state schools/academies they'd be in a mess.

That's the market, ain't it? If you support private education, you presumably have to support the right of the schools to set their own prices (and thereby outprice sections of the population for whom you have particular sympathy). We now live in a globalised world, so just as we rely on the international poor to produce our consumer crap, so we rely on international capitalists to buy our goods and services (like education).

And of course it's not the case that Oxbridge reserves places for applicants from private schools, it's simply the case that privately educated kids are more likely to 1) have more knowledge of the requisite hoops through which one has to jump, and 2) be more encouraged, and/or motivated, to do the jumping.

(Original post by Fires)
Up to a point that's true, until you consider that those schools have private access to a large and wholly disproportionate swathe of pre-reserved places at Oxbridge. (Yes, of course, the Universities pretend they aren't pre-reserved - but we all know they are!)

(Original post by lukas1051)
Doesn't surprise me. The cost to put your kid in a private school is completely ridiculous and not worth the money - £26,000 a year for five years to get a few more A's at GCSE? You can do that for £130,000 less with a bit of hard work. It's mad, you have to be clinically insane. It's no wonder only the very rich still send their children to them.

Not all private school's are £26,000, actually very few come in this top band. You are not only paying for an a eduction that some see as only getting a few more A's at GCSE but you are paying for an eduction that provides not only what is on syllabuses but also beyond.

(Original post by jismith1989)
And of course it's not the case that Oxbridge reserves places for applicants from private schools, it's simply the case that privately educated kids are more likely to 1) have more knowledge of the requisite hoops through which one has to jump, and 2) be more encouraged, and/or motivated, to do the requisite jumping.

Right. The key hoop through which you have to jump is to submit an application. Oxbridge admits from state and independent schools at broadly the rates at which the pupils from these sectors apply. To say, "...but 42% of their intake is privately educated, while that's true for only 7% of the population!" misses the point. Oxbridge can choose only from the pool of applicants is has, and 40-something percent of those in that pool went to private schools.

private schools are just better. they produce better graduates than state and so it goes without saying that most of the students at top unis will be drawn from private schools.

state schools unfortunately have got worse since they got rid of selection.

poor students with potential can no longer excel because they are kept back by the disruptive behaviour other students. the state schools are little better than zoos.

if selection was brought back, then at least the poor people who are academically minded would be able to learn in an environment where they could excel -- thus increasing their chances of going to a top uni.